How do we manage our mental health while digitally bearing witness to a deeply troubled world? Naomi Arnold talks to three people cultivating offline hobbies to find enjoyment, connection and respite from the madness.
“I’m never not talking about needle felting to someone,” Laurie Winkless says. She picks up her woolly hobby whenever she feels the need to stab something. Considering she’s a physicist and science journalist who’s often reporting on climate change in a world increasingly beset by its effects, that’s become quite frequently.
A modern incarnation of the ancient art of felting wool to make cloth, needle felting is repeatedly pushing a barbed needle through wool into a base, eventually felting the wool until it creates a solid shape. Winkless is so enamoured with the craft that she now holds beginner classes. Her science training is evident; she’s made a thick, pink brain, a large and detailed wētāpunga, and our entire solar system on a string.
“It’s so therapeutic. The sound of it, the feel of it, the scent of it, and then turning what looks like just loose, wispy fibres into a 3D object,” she says. “It hits all my senses, it quietens my brain. I'm really fully concentrating on the thing in front of me, and I think that's quite a rare occurrence these days.
She says she feels no nourishment from “the mindless scrolling” – “which I also do, let’s be clear”.
“I find myself feeling more tired afterwards. Whereas when I'm doing needle felting, I don't always make something from beginning to end in one session; it’s quite a slow craft. But I just feel renewed. I feel like my breathing is better. I find it very meditative.”
Winkless, originally from Ireland, has found “the general rise in fascism” difficult to witness. “To see people come up with their own reckons rather than listen to the knowledge that’s been established and built by experts, ignoring evidence and ignoring data, it just feels very frustrating.
“The climate crisis is probably the biggest one of all because sometimes I feel like I’m screaming into the void. We know what's happening, we know what's causing it, and yet actions that we see taken by our own government here and governments overseas go directly against the knowledge that we have. I find that crazy-inducing. But if I go into that 100 percent, I know despair follows.
“I will keep talking about it. But I also have this other stuff that is joyful and that calms me down. I almost always leave it being like, ‘Oh, I'm so glad I made the time to do that’."
Switching off from the world on the climbing wall
Claire Williamson has a complicated relationship with her home country. The native of Chicago has spent most of her adult life out of the US, first in Japan and now settled in New Zealand with job, house, and husband.
“For everyone who sees things happen in their own country at a distance, it's a very strange feeling,” she says. “You experience the sadness and the joy and the stress and the horror and the shock, but then – you’re in New Zealand. You're at a distance, and you don't feel like you're necessarily entitled to the feelings because it’s not happening to you.”
With a job in communications, Williamson says she needs to know what’s happening in the world, partly because of how global events might affect her clients. But she’s started personally switching off by bouldering at a local climbing wall.
Friends had been badgering her to come with them, but there was one problem – she’s terrified of heights.
“I thought ‘I’m not going to enjoy it. But I’ll go, and then I can say I’ve done it and they’ll leave me alone’.”
On her first try, she found herself halfway up the wall and scared out of her wits. But her friends were cheering her on from below, instructing her where to place her feet. When she got home that night, her arms were so sore she didn’t have enough strength to pump the shampoo bottle to wash her hair.
“My forearms hurt for three days.”
But Williamson, a self-confessed Type A, then found she was hooked.
“I went ‘I have to be able to do it. I have to go back. I know I can do it.’”
Now she finds bouldering so engaging that she can’t think of anything else when she’s on the wall. That’s turned out to be a benefit.
“I'm a very anxious person in many ways,” she says. “I overthink things, I run through scenarios. I over-plan. I cannot do any of those things when I'm balancing on one foot, trying to reach for another hold halfway up a wall, knowing all that stands between me and potentially falling off the wall is my ability to grab the next hold.
She also likes that the gym she frequents is one large room with a big communal resting cushion in the middle.
“Everyone's just flopped all over that cushion with the brushes and the liquid chalk bottles, and no one's really got their phones. So you naturally end up chatting with people or asking for advice. It forces me to be so physically and mentally present. Even when I don't make it to the top and I'm just lying on the mat in frustration.
“I'll have a really stressful day at work where something will go wrong, or I'll have seen a terrible news headline – and even if you only go for thirty minutes, it's really, really helpful.”
Swapping toxic social media for running, stamp collecting, volunteering
David McDonald* suffered a social media pile-on once. He disagreed with someone online about a topic he thought was innocuous. But it triggered a huge reaction that overwhelmed him.
“I probably should have just kept my mouth shut,” he says. “I got this sense of this massive wave just crashing on me, and it invaded every aspect of my life. I couldn't get away from it.”
“It was the most awful experience. I learned my lesson very clearly. And that is to steer clear of social media.”
At the time he underwent his public shaming, McDonald was suffering from a chronic illness causing poor mental health, for which he struggled to get medical care. He decided the best thing he could do was get fitter. So he started walking a 2km circuit around the neighbourhood, and when that got easy, he began trotting. Now, he runs, and finds it “an incredibly therapeutic pastime”.
“I don't even listen to the radio or podcasts,” he says. “I just enjoy being alive. I enjoy listening to the birds. You see people out and about and getting on with their lives. It gives you time to reflect and think about not only your day, but where you might be headed or any issues of the day that might be going on. It gives you a bit of an adrenaline rush.
“It’s just been just this huge, huge win. I'm no longer mired in that oppressive cape of ‘Things are just really quite shit at the moment’. I find the positivity leaks into many other aspects of my life as well.”
McDonald is also now a passionate stamp collector, and instead of contributing to the world by posting his opinions online, he volunteers his time to help a local community group.
“I get to meet people and contribute to something that's greater than myself,” he says. “I'm not trying to gain power or prestige. I’m not there for anything other than to help. And that's actually really nice.”
*Name changed for privacy
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